The Tools of Mexico’s Drug Cartels, From Landmines to Monster Trucks

It can be a little deceiving to think of Mexico's drug cartels as simply gangsters. Instead, they've blurred boundaries between organized crime and quasi-military insurgents, seized swathes of territory and become some of the world's most dangerous criminal gangs. They've also acquired plenty of firepower to back it up.

The Zetas are one of the most disruptive and aggressive of them all. Formed by ex-military men who became armed enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas split with their former patrons nearly three years ago and have since become one of Mexico's largest and most dangerous cartels. While most of those ex-military founding fathers of the cartel are now dead or in prison, they've retained a culture of military loyalties, if not so much the discipline and hierarchy. Or much in the way of taste. In September, Mexican police arrested Ramiro Pozos, the alleged leader of drug gang "The Resistance" and Zeta ally -- with his gold- and silver-plated AK-47. Meanwhile, coming up on Saturday, incoming president Enrique Pena Nieto takes office, the first change in the presidency since the drug war exploded across the country more than six years ago. Aside from reducing the level of violence, one of his priorities will be wrenching back control of cartel territory, and putting it back under the control of the state.

It won't be easy. To enforce their claims, the Zetas — and other criminal groups like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel — deploy an extensive amount of hardware, nearly rivaling Mexico's own military. Police forces are often corrupted or threatened into compliance, and almost always outgunned. Here's a look at seven examples why.

Photo: AP

Under the Gun

The Mexican army regularly seizes arsenals of small arms from stockpiles, abandoned after firefights or concealed inside vehicles driven by drug traffickers. In June, a "narco rebellion" in the border city of Piedras Negras resulted sporadic firefights lasting hours. After it was over, the military had turned up 50 AK-47 rifles, along with grenade launchers, various machine guns, shotguns and bolt-action rifles. But the cartels are also getting increasingly more powerful guns. In March, firefights between police and the Zetas netted both M-60 and a .30-caliber Browning machine gun. Sniper rifles and machine guns up to the .50-caliber size have been discovered. The Mexican military has even turned up a German MG34 machine gun from World War II.

An open question is where the cartels get their guns. It's generally accepted the bulk come from two places: The United States and Central America. In April, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 68,000 out of 99,000 guns discovered in Mexico and submitted to the ATF since 2007 originated in the United States. That's about 68 percent of the total submitted for tracing. The subject is also fraught with U.S. domestic politics, and was at the heart of the scandal around the ATF's botched Fast and Furious operation, which resulted in an estimated 2,000 straw-purchased firearms being smuggled into Mexico after purchase in Arizona gun stores.

Photo: AP

Drug Gangs ... With Grenades

Hand-lobbed grenades are unfortunately quite common, and hundreds of grenades have reportedly been detonated in Mexico in 2012 alone. In 2009, "spillover" violence came to the forefront of concerns over border security after someone threw a South Korean fragmentation grenade into a strip club in Pharr, Texas. The grenade didn't explode, but was later traced to another batch of imported grenades that were lobbed at the U.S. consulate in Monterrey and a TV news studio.

Rocket-propelled grenade launchers are some of the heaviest weapons possessed by the cartels, and owe their introduction to the region during the Cold War conflicts in Central America. The launchers have also been reportedly stolen from military stockpiles in countries like El Salvador and Honduras and smuggled across the border into Mexico. They've been used in retaliatory attacks against the police and army following the arrest of cartel bosses, and Heriberto Lazcano —
the former Zetas boss killed by Mexican marines in early October — was also reportedly packing one.

Later in October, several Mexican cops came close to being on the receiving end. A police SWAT team in the border city of Piedas Negras stopped a stolen van when they were fired on by gunmen. The gunmen fled the van on foot, but left behind a Soviet-made RPG-7 launcher with three rockets. It provoked El Narco author Ioan Grillo to note: "If the criminals had got a rocket off, they could easily have blown the SWAT vehicle to pieces."

Photo: AP

Road Warriors

One of the most overt expressions of cartel power is the convoy. They're how the cartels move when moving in force, like a narco-trafficking blitzkrieg. A single convoy can number into the dozens of SUVs and trucks loaded down with gunmen, and a single grupo de limpieza, or "cleanup squad," can pose a formidable and fast-moving danger. Some vehicles are armored, with steel welded inside interior compartments and paneling.

Other than armored plates in the doors and bulletproof glass for windows, cartel vehicles have been seen with armored sunscreens that flip up to act as a shield for a gunman poking out the top. Sniper perches have been spotted fitted to the beds of pickup trucks, and the cartels have even outfitted vehicles with nail- and oil-spraying gadgets like James Bond. A related tactic is to carjack motorists and use their vehicles as roadblocks: a way to slow the authorities down while operating in cities. The cartels have also taken to randomly shooting out car tires to block traffic during firefights.

The Monster

Because too much is apparently never enough for narcos, the cartels were spotted last year with their own "tanks." That's bit of a misnomer, as the "tanks" are not tracked vehicles, and more like souped-up armored monster trucks à la Mad Max. Mexican authorities have reportedly seized more than 100 of the cartel "monsters," which come in varying DIY designs, include firing ports and turrets, room for up to 12 gangsters at a time plus an armored steel shell. The biggest versions appear to be retrofitted dump trucks and semi-trucks.

But there's also a practical reason for having them. With so much firepower being thrown around between rival gangsters, blow-torching steel plates onto a semi-truck seems like the logical thing to do, albeit from the perspective of a drug cartel.

Photo: AP

The Incredible Flying Drug Mule

Closer to gliders than an actual plane, ultralight planes are small, cost around $3,000 and their engines purr quietly. Some don't even have to land, and can literally release a harness carrying a drug load down to a waiting friend below. The downside is that they move slowly, but can also fly low and hide from the Border Patrol's radars. Their use is also on the upsurge. U.S. Customs and Border Protection spotted 223 flights in 2011, double that of 2009. Few are ever caught.

An open question is whether the cartels will take the route of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, who once used car bombs to inflict mass casualties on the Colombian public. But Mexico's gangsters haven't indicated they will so far, perhaps seeing it in their interest to avoid bringing down too much heat from the authorities. An alleged 2009 Iranian-Zetas bomb plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington was met with disbelief — the alleged plotter was never confirmed to have actually met with anyone from the Zetas.

There's also a difference between a "car bomb" and a bomb that happens to be placed in a car. Many vehicle-borne bombs used by the cartels have been fairly small — sometimes just a few sticks of dynamite in a trunk — compared to a large and powerful bomb that could potentially level a building. But the cartels also appear to be building more sophisticated bombs, and have been discovered with military-grade mines.

In May, Mexican troops fought a group of drug traffickers in the state of Zacatecas, killed three of them, and seized an arsenal of weapons including a M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel mine. The Claymore can blast hundreds of steel balls at a range of more than 300 feet, and is used by the U.S. military, though is also widely copied around the world. Even more worrying was that the mine was seized together with its detonator wire and firing device, meaning it could have been usable.

Radio Zeta

While the higher-level bosses reportedly rely on the internet to communicate, the cartels' lower-level gangsters and lookouts have taken to building their own radio network deep inside remote areas of Mexico's countryside.

The number of cartel radio antennas spread out across Mexico's drug-trafficking routes alone could reach into the hundreds. In September, the Mexican military dismantled 167 antennas in just one operation, including solar panels used for electrical power. One surprising transmission tower discovered recently in Veracruz state — and likely used by the Zetas — reached a height of 295 feet. The cartels have also reportedly jumped onto military radio signals to broadcast taunts and threats, and have even taken to kidnapping and enslaving engineers with the know-how to build and maintain the networks. What's even worse? The cartels never seem to let the engineers go.

Mexican troops also seem to keep finding new nodes in the network. In November, the Mexican army discovered cartel radio hubs in two states, including solar panels, generators, computer equipment, RF amplifiers and radio detectors, in addition to 17 radio receivers. It's a reminder that firepower alone isn't make the cartels a formidable foe — it's their ability to plan and coordinate.